The firm has announced Stripe Corporate Card, which is a Visa credit card that offers 2% back on a business’ top two spending categories each month, no fees, and the ability to access a virtual card immediately after getting approved.Prospective cardholders will be verified and approved based on their revenue and other information from Stripe’s payments platform, per TechCrunch. And Stripe will get revenue from the card via an interchange fee for each transaction, but because users are expected to pay their balance each month, the card does not have an interest rate or other fees.
Small businesses could be a fruitful market for the Stripe Corporate Card as the segment struggles to access credit. Stripe already claims millions of clients, giving it a huge pool of potential cardholders, many of whom have substantial need: Bloomberg noted that the owners of the small businesses that are the product’s target audience often struggle to secure cards and tend to rely on their own personal accounts for expense management, which can exacerbate existing time-consuming, paper-heavy processes, particularly when cashflow is already an issue.
Offering digital tools like immediately-available virtual cards could help the firm win users and bring in volume fast: Giants like Amex are competing in the space, and other firms with similar services, like Brex, have recently achieved high valuations and racked up clients, per Bloomberg.
The introduction of Stripe Corporate Card comes just after the firm’s entrance into lending with Stripe Capital as it is building out its offerings. In addition to these initiatives Stripe has gotten into the brick-and-mortar point-of-sale space (POS), as its goal of covering all of a retailer’s payment and commerce-related needs requires wide-ranging efforts. If it can serve as a one-stop-shop for everything a merchant needs, including processing, financing, business management tools, and more, it may be able to build loyalty from its clients while attracting more, and potentially securing greater revenue from all of its users with its numerous services.